Halcyon - open rehearsal - This Kind of Life

This is a rare opportunity to get behind-the-scenes with Halcyon and experience how a piece is built in rehearsal. See the artists exploring the nuances and decisions that shape the final presentation, the conversations that take place and what the process is for constructing a final performance (or in this instance recording).

This Kind of Life is a delightful piece by Elliott Gyger - full of wonderful verbatim conversations and recipes to make your mouth water. For soprano, mezzo-soprano, clarinet, cello, piano and harp, it sets extracts of letters between American chef Julia Child and her friend Avis de Voto. A birthday gift, it was commissioned in 2018 by Ian Dickson for his partner Reg Holloway. It charts Julia and Avis’ developing relationship from introductions to first meeting and features some wonderful verbatim correspondance and even a few deliciously evocative recipes… with plenty of butter and garlic!

Halcyon will be going into the studio next week to record the piece as part of a second CD of Elliott’s commissioned work for Halcyon. Alongside This Kind of Life, the finished CD will also include Elliott’s Paul Lowin Prize-winning work autobiochemistry for voice and cello.

To help financially support this project, we are offering limited tickets to attend an open rehearsal on Sunday. Or you can nominate to donate directly towards the recording costs by pressing the Buy Ticket button and clicking the Donate option.

TIME: 5pm on Sunday 26th July
VENUE: Choirs Rehearsal Studio, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct
Wharf 4/5, 15 Hickson Rd Dawes Point

Tickets $50 Click HERE to purchase or donate

ARTISTS: Susannah Lawergren soprano, Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano and artistic director, Jarred Mattes clarinets, James Larsen cello, Esther Lukins harp and Jo Allan piano with Elizabeth Scott conductor

Night Tides

PLEASE NOTE: THERE HAS BEEN A VENUE CHANGE FOR THIS PERFORMANCE

An intimate exploration of time, memory and mythos, Night Tides stirs with nature’s eternal currents. This tender collection of works shimmers with poetic delicacy; water trembles, mythological worlds shimmer in nocturnal hues, and the alluring sonority of the voice weaves its way through the shifting textures of Halcyon’s characteristically chameleonic ensemble. 

From Gordon Kerry’s evocative Three Malouf Songs, which paint a striking vision of Queensland’s Glasshouse Mountains, to Christine McCombe’s plaintive Ebb Tide, Australian composers lie at the heart of this program. Between these luminous, tidal movements flows the world premiere of a new arrangement of songs from Kevin March’s Mythweaver, composed of Sappho’s fragmented and ardent poetry. Lisa Cheney’s No Distant Place: I. The Soul’s Eternity, is a spellbinding instrumental interlude, as clarinet, piano and violin emerge and bloom like pinpricks of light. Elena Kats-Chernin’s Moondust, wordless melodies wax and wane in a nocturnal reverie. Paul Stanhope’s brief song My Love in her Attire features sinuous dovetailing lines for soprano, vibraphone and clarinet, which glimmer with a subtle wittiness.

Three Australian premieres further affirm Halcyon’s unfaltering devotion to new music curation: Moonlight, Summer Moonlight is Estonian Tõnu Korvits’ elegy to a solemn evening, while the frozen moment of a perfect shade of blue is illuminated in Hilary Tann’s …Slate, blue-gray. Quiet Songs is Jeremy Thurlow’s translucent sculpture of Yves Bonnefoy’s murmuring poetry. 

As Halcyon celebrate 26 years of music-making, join artistic director and mezzo-soprano Jenny Duck-Chong for a breathtaking evening, as alongside a cast of Halcyon musicians both old and new, spectres of grief and reminiscence mingle with stunning evocations of nature’s radiance.

WORKS
Gordon Kerry - Three Malouf Songs (2015)
Christine McCombe - Ebb Tide (2016)
Kevin March - Two songs from Mythweaver (2009, 2021 chamber version) - world premiere
Lisa Cheney - The Soul’s Eternity from No Distant Place (2015)
Elena Kats-Chernin - Moondust (2019)
Paul Stanhope - My Love in Her Attire (2013)
Hilary Tann - Slate, blue-gray (2012)
Jeremy Thurlow - Quiet Songs (2014)
Tõnu Kõrvits - Moonlight, Summer Moonlight (2013)

ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano and artistic director
Amy Moore – soprano
Jane Bishop – flute
Alex McCracken – clarinet
Maria Lindsay – violin
Heather Lloyd - viola
James Larsen – cello
Will Hansen - double bass
Stephanie McCallum - piano
Kaela Phillips – harp
Alison Pratt - percussion

Read the full program here

Night Tides
18 October at 7pm
Choirs Rehearsal Studio, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct
Wharf 4/5, 15 Hickson Rd Dawes Point

The Choirs Rehearsal Studio can be found behind the STC Box Office, in the breezeway, opposite the Sydney Dance Company.
The 324 and 325 bus runs directly to Wharf 4/5 on Hickson Rd from near Town Hall.

Tickets $58 full price/ $48 senior concession/ $33 student concession
Tickets available through Humantix here

All enquiries: info@halcyonartmusic.com.au

1st performance - The Silences Inside Me - Lunar Festival 2024

Jenny will be performing the world premiere of Corrina Bonshek’s The Silences Inside Me for voice, yehu and cello at the Chinese Gardens in Sydney on February 11. The program, curated by composer/performer/researcher Nicholas Ng and presented by NSW Government as part of the 2024 Lunar Festival, will feature Corrina's new piece and other small works for voice, cello and Chinese instruments. 

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The Silences Inside Me was commissioned by Halcyon’s artistic director, Jenny Duck-Chong, and developed by Corrina in collaboration with writer/director Tasnim Hossaim, using Jenny’s own Chinese heritage as the frame for the work.

Corrina says:
“"The Silences Inside Me (2024), was born from a collaboration with Jenny and Tasnim that sits with the complex relationships with ancestry in the context of 1st and 2nd-generation Australians with migrant roots. Each collaborator has heritage / family in different parts of the world, and it was fascinating to chat and reflect on our shared and different experiences with family stories, cultural rituals, and the absence of these. I love the way that silence in the music is multifaceted - evoking the gaps in memory or absence as well as a space of joyful possibility in reimagining/rebuilding and growth."

The resulting work, a little like the elegant simplicity of a calligraphic gesture, has pared back the text to its essence, taking the listener on an evocative and reflective journey of discovery.  Halcyon is delighted to present this work for the first time in this picturesque setting, in a program of Chinese and Chinese-inspired works for Chinese and Western instruments.

See program note below.

ARTISTS
Jenny Duck-Chong mezzo-soprano
Nicholas Ng erhu, yehu, hulusi
James Larsen cello
Chloe Chung dizi, flute

Sunday 11 February at 12.30pm and 1.30pm
Peace Boat Pavillion
Chinese Garden of Friendship
Pier St Cnr of Harbour St
Darling Harbour

COST
$12 garden entry
The free program will be performed at 12.30pm and 1.30pm. 

NOTE: There are no seats for the event, but you can find plenty of places around the space to listen, or make a reservation for a table and banquet lunch in The Gardens tea room (garden entry price $8 for restaurant guests).

PROGRAM NOTE

The Silences Inside Me (2024)
Music by Corrina Bonshek, words by Tasnim Hossain.

The Silences Inside Me is a musical/poetic musing on ancestry that draws upon imagery from conversations with Jenny Duck-Chong about her Chinese roots. Jenny, Tasnim Hossain (writer) and myself as composer, each have heritage / family in different parts of the world. It was fascinating to reflect how we all use family stories, cultural rituals, and even objects to connect, or reconnect, to our ancestors. The silence in the title is multifaceted. It refers to the absence or loss of family connection, but also to a powerful space of reimagining and possibility. Musically the work journeys from a recognition of absence (the halting, gapped musical statements of the opening), to a rebuilding to connection (via imagery of a golden hummingbird and music that consciously references Chinese folk music), and finally to a third part where silence is refigured a space of flowering joy and connection. In this part, the ensemble gets to improvise and develop earlier musical ideas in new ways using their imagination and creative gifts.
- Corrina Bonshek

I've lost something precious
We lost things once precious
In the gaps
In the silence

Language, stories, family.
Holding onto absence.
Stories gone untold.
Ashamed to have lost what has gone.

A hummingbird.

Somewhere in memory
a story untold
A picture
raised leaves and flowers.
Leaves of gold,
shining.

I found something special
in the liminal spaces,
in the piecing together.
Learning, finding, building together.
Imagination,
silent, no more.
- Tasnim Hossain

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The Silences Inside Me was created with support from Halcyon, the Australian Cultural Fund, and Corrina Bonshek & Collaborators (who are supported by the City of Gold Coast).

The event is presented by